This season of "Justfied" has been noticeably weaker than the previous four chapters, save the incredible episode that involved Theo Tonin's capture, and the last three weeks of the series have been particularly ho-hum. Thankfully, "Wrong Roads" is a return to form that makes solid use of the show's overstocked villain pond and partners Raylan up with a loner DEA agent who might be his ghost of Christmas future.

I've spent most of this season complaining that Boyd's story arc has been far more interesting than Raylan's while the Marshal lives on the margins of the narrative, but our cowboy's trip to Memphis fixed all of that in short order. The Boyd scenes also slowed down considerably last week, and the Crowes have remained largely mediocre villains, but the reappearance of Wynn Duffy, Jay and Roscoe gave the show a much needed shot in the arm as well.

I understand Raylan's demotion and growing irrelevance in the Kentucky office are a necessary part of his budding fallout with Art. "Justified" used to be good at finding cases for Raylan to chase off-duty (season 1's "Hatless" comes to mind), but the show has veered so far from those caper-of-the-week stories in recent years that the writing just seemed off its game the last three weeks. Odd pacing, a complete lack of villains and the under-utilization of Tim and Rachel just left us with Raylan standing around, looking almost as bored as I felt.

Enter Eric Roberts, Wood Harris and Steve Harris. The appearance of Agent Miller as a cautionary tale was very well-timed, especially with Raylan's continued loner vibe. Our marshal has no family left, he hasn't seen his new baby yet and he's all but alienated himself from Art and company. Miller, with his slap leather tendencies and ever present flask, certainly looks like a portrait of Raylan fifteen years from now. Obsessed with his job, light on friends and absent from his own family as well.

There were so many parallels between Raylan and Miller, from his relationship with Hot Rod that evoked Raylan's connection with his Boyd to his hair-trigger killing of Roscoe, that I feared the character play would be too on the nose. But the chemistry between Roberts and Timothy Olyphant, especially as they stumble upon Boyd's drug summit in the episode's tense closing moments, more than made up for that. All told, that half of the episode gave me hope this season will right itself over the final four episodes.

Boyd's arc was the lesser of our two leads this week, and that was likely to do with the overabundance of Darryl Crowe Jr. I know, I know. I've been complaining about the Crowes having too small of a role, now I'm complaining when it grows larger. But no offense to Michael Rappaport, but the Crowes just do next to nothing for me. Hell, Dewey may have had the best Crowe family scene of the year this week in the episode's closing scene, but I'm not sure if that's because I'd love to know what the hell he's going to do with 50 bricks of heroin or if I just enjoyed seeing Danny Crowe get hit by a truck.

To me, Darryl comes across a very low-rent version of Boyd. He's clever, but not clever enough to outflank tougher enemies like Crowder. He also gets sized up as a big fish that just made the transition from pond to ocean by people like Wynn Duffy and the cartel, but unlike Boyd, he lacks the finesse and flair to thrive in those situations. He just looked lost in the scene with Boyd and Wynn Duffy at the episode's end.

It doesn't help when your season's "Big Bad" is easily outshined by your villains of the week. In this case, Jay and Roscoe. Some of you will say I'm blinded by my love of Wood Harris and fond memories of Avon Barksdale from "The Wire" (and you'd be right), but the brothers were an interesting pair on this show. "Justified" has a massive dearth of minority villains, and I just loved the way Jay and Roscoe almost had their own language, seemingly reading from a playbook in action sequences shouting things like "Anvil and Hammer."

I guess someone had to die in that haven of cops and robbers, but I was sad to see Roscoe go. Sure, it opens up the door for Jay to grow into a stronger, vengeful regular series villain, (especially with Hot Rod's demise and a power vacuum in the Memphis weed racket), but damn it, I thought those two had potential.

While I've enjoyed Boyd's arc for the most part this year, I'm starting to wonder about the legitimacy of his plans. He was supposed to play kingpin this season as Duffy's main distributor in Kentucky, but we're now nine episodes in and he has yet to bring his shipment into town. The delays make sense when you account for his struggles to protect Ava in prison and his need to depend on the Crowes, but I'm a little disappointed to not see a payoff of Boyd's rise to king of the hill yet. As far as his decision to kill the old man as part of Ava's prison plot line, I think we can chalk that up to "what else was he supposed to do?"

"Wrong Turns" was a good, not great, episode of "Justified" and one that was sorely needed. I remain of the opinion that a down season of this series is still better than most anything else I watch, but when you've had as good of a run as "Justified" has, the audience has a hard time accepting anything less.

RANDOM MUSINGS:

— A certain editor of mine who shall remain nameless was chatting me up about "Justified" the other day, and was surprised to hear how much I preferred Boyd's arc to Raylan's this year. Boyd had crossed the line and become something of a black hat villain instead of the layered anti-hero we've known since season 2. Beyond his killing of the old man this week, I don't see it, but I'm curious what you guys think.

• So it's Ava vs. Judith now? Ava's jail house struggles have entertained me this year, but I'm hoping it leads to her moving away from Boyd and becoming her own woman in season 6. If all this time is being devoted to a plot with no pay off.

• Hey, Nick Searcy's still on this show! Enjoyed Art and Raylan's collision at the episode, as Searcy played the scene with the right mix of discontent and frustration. It doesn't seem like Art has any intention of burning Raylan, but he's sure as hell not going to learn to be OK with him anytime soon either. PS, this would be a dirty trick, but has anyone wondered if Raylan actually lied to Art at the end of the Theo Tonin episode? We've never actually confirmed that Art knows Raylan had Nicky Augustine killed, we were just led to assume that.

• Can I have a .gif of Danny Crowe being hit by a car? Please?

• Miller dying because of his lone wolf tendencies and obsession with his job would make perfect sense if we're doing the whole "this is how Raylan could meet his end" storyline, but I would have enjoyed a guest appearance or two from Miller down the line.

• R.I.P. Hot Rod. I always thought you were a better bad guy than people gave you credit for.